Warcrafting
by Fruitiest of Mallards
Summary: Glimpses into a world made up of various things: crafts, arts, lives, and legacies...but most of all, war.
1. Proof, I

_This is a series of short-stories set in the world of 'WoW,' in case you couldn't tell from the summary. Most of them will be based off of canon lore or be centered around characters I play, or others' characters whom I have been given permission to write for. Enjoy and please review. If I get anything wrong lore-wise, do tell me (kindly). I want to be as accurate as possible, especially if I'm going to be squeezing my own original people into that world._

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Strangely, the clouds were not moving.

The young worgen blinked, repeatedly, as she realized this. The clouds were dark and ominous, and an instinctual sense deep within her told her that they should be traveling in whatever direction in rushes of wind and perhaps rain, but, they were not. They stood still, as if someone had painted them with such detail and vision it was enough to trick even the wisest eyes.

She blinked again and glanced about just to remind herself of her grip on reality. It was as she did this it hit her. She was dreaming.

She woke.

She was not much of one for dream interpretations, however, she couldn't help but wonder what that dream could have possibly meant. Was it a nightmare? Was she losing her mind?

"'Sis," said a voice. "Heb'!"

She sat up in bed. "Whaaat," she hated how her voice rasped. It was something she would have to deal with. Her brother, Paddarick, had learned how to shapeshift from worgen to human and back with seeming ease. She, Hebellina, was another story. They were the Tebbin siblings. Once upon a simpler time, they were the notorious child duo of Tempest's Reach, always up to no good in the eyes of adults. Now they were little more than domesticated animals on two legs, sometimes four. Hebellina found that darkly humorous. She had always aspired to be a hunter, a master of beasts. The first creature she ever tamed? Herself.

Her eyes were crusty and heavy. She felt sore. How she had grown to hate her life in such a short time.

Well, she had a purebred mastiff. Ranaldo, loyal and true. She didn't count him as a beast, never had, though she'd been told by the local lead hunter that he was technically a hunting companion. Hadn't she practiced shooting deer as a youthful girl with Ranaldo in tow? She had raised him from a pup and it was a wonder to her that he had relearned how to recognize her in worgen form. Her scent must be so different. Never doubt a dog...

"'Tis morn," Paddarick said quickly. Hebellina swung her legs to the side of the bed. It was a cot, more like, and it was greatly uncomfortable. She couldn't find it in her to complain the night previous, she was too exhausted then, from all of the work. Being not entirely human any longer, she and her sibling had had to perform many tasks the past few weeks for numerous individuals and endure a certain brand of scorn from half of them, to prove their humanity. The entire time with the threat of Gilnean culture being annihilated by the Forsaken hanging over their heads...

Hebellina, as always, brushed away the unwanted thoughts by thinking of a topic more humorous. It was a morbid humor, as it should be in times like these. She found it slightly saddening that the only man to have ever entered her sleeping quarters in her life was her brother. She suspected any sane man would rather run in fear than court her after all which had happened. She snarked, "No, it's dusk."

"Enough of that! No time for banter," Paddarick cut her off quickly. "The elvish ships are here."

Hebellina froze. She'd thought they'd never arrive. Drowning that thought—it wasn't proper gratitude—she got to her clawed feet and straightened. "Forgive me for wastin' time," her brother nodded. They knew each-other better than anyone else in the worlds, and the mutual agreement went unspoken. They'd both do their absolute best, from thereon. In a new land. They were worgen, yes, but in the end they were primarily human.

Hebellina merely hoped that the elves would not stare as blatantly as the whole of Gilneas did.


	2. Frenzied Plaguehound

The hound knew little aside from the burning pain at its neck and feet; they seared, they burnt, and it never ended. It was a constant agony. The hound paced to and fro fitfully, in the beginning, it had screamed and howled and wailed at the greenish flames. Now, it had grown somehow numb, still feeling the flames, but its brain rewired itself to tolerate them after so long. That didn't take away the sense in its mind that they were excruciating.

It was not the only hound to be plagued so, it dwelled in an entire pack of those like it. Other hounds, just as tortured by their infected bodies as it was, and just as angered by intruders upon their territory. The hound fought tooth and nail every strange aggressor it happened on, poisoning them with its sickness, pleased that its biggest thorn in its sided could be used for its own benefit. The giant carrion-eaters, thick, yellowy worms, it could do nothing about them. They would remain. They could be ignored.

A new scent on the wind made its hackles rise, and while its head pulsed with a frenzied migraine which did not leave, it followed the rest of its kind—it used to be a simple darkhound, they all had, before this vileness permeated their beings—to the area of interest. There between the trees trod something tall and two-legged, the hound did not recognize what it was. It hardly mattered, it wasn't supposed to come near.

The hound, snarling and drooling, leapt forward and bit into a forelimb with all of its might, and was dismayed to find itself quite easily shaken off. The foreign entity was massive and coarsely pelted. Through the haze of madness in its vision the hound could see cranial horns pointed downward. A broad bovine snout showed a curling lip.

It held a stick-like object, and swung it repeatedly at the hound and its brethren. It narrowly missed the hound's ears. Suddenly enraged, the hound tore at a piece of hanging flesh, only to find it come off like a loose piece of shed fur.

Bewildered, the hound spat the flesh—fur?—onto the ground, the others were doing their jobs attacking the intruder, and the hound, set to rejoin them, barked in outrage again—

When one of the hounds fell at the newcomer's feet. It had been a sharp and swift movement, sickening, stinking green blood poured out of a wound inflicted on the fallen hound's throat. The runes carved into its sides by supernatural forces dimmed.

The hound experienced a spark of fear, a fear for its life or what remained of it, for the first time since it had learned to go on with its disease.


	3. Proof, II

The towering ancient was a faded silhouette in the distance, but there was no mistaking its presence. The night elves had brought them here, and Hebellina had never witnessed such a sight in her life. There was no such thing as an ancient in Gilneas, before now. The stark difference between reality now and how reality was then struck her once more.

They wanted her to man a glaive-thrower. 'They,' being her fellow Gilneans and the night-elves. There were not enough night-elves to operate the...things, the green-and-purple things of strange foreign make, and she wouldn't be the only Gilnean using one, either. That fact made her feel a little more secure, when they had asked her, she had immediately, insanely assumed that it was yet another test of her humanity she had to barrel through.

It still was in a way, but knowing that she would not be alone...

"The orcish war-machines must be destroyed," said an elf in a smooth, non-human voice, "They pose a threat to the ancients."

_What about us?_ Hebellina couldn't help but think.

"Throw as many glaives at one time in their direction as you can."

Hebellina feared that, with her special brand of luck, she might end up aiming at herself instead.


End file.
